


to love and to hold

by lazywriter7



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (briefly) - Freeform, Aromantic Bruce Banner, Asexual Bruce Banner, Asexual Natasha Romanov, Developing Relationship, Domestic Avengers, F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, Internalized Acephobia, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, POV Bruce Banner, Self-Acceptance, Self-Discovery, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 09:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14892069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: His expression was a little too brittle. “Lucky for you I’m a bit too much of a coward for sex, then.”But Natasha’s lips only flattened, gaze implacable. “Have you thought not wanting to do something might not be the same as being a coward?”





	to love and to hold

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. So I'd written this on Tumblr awhile back, and friends asked me to crosspost to ao3 and I never really got around to it.
> 
> Then I read a post on Tumblr today with... a certain set of views that made me fairly upset and cry on and off for about two hours. Which of course, meant that this fic needed to go up fucking today.
> 
> I'd like to preface this by saying that the views/thoughts/emotions represented here are not universal and do not reflect the ace community as a whole. Also bewarned of crass language, internalised acephobia, brief thoughts of suicide and the general messed-up ness of Bruce Banner's brain. But I like to think of this as ultimately, a happy story.
> 
> Dedicated to ishipallthings, who understands me and always makes me smile :)

Bruce Banner’s first girlfriend cheated on him.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a monotone. Snot dripped out her nostrils, caked the foundation on her upper lip. Red-rimmed lids peeked behind mascara-thick lashes. “I’m really sorry.”

This probably wasn’t heartbreak. Fifteen though he may be, Bruce was peculiarly well acquainted with _this_ conflagration of emotion – humiliation that scalded his skin red, made his bones shake – rage deep and banked, eating away at his gut, springing bile from his throat. The impulse to hurl was sudden and overpowering, though he couldn’t tell if it’d be last night’s chicken parma or the invective he’d borne and swallowed during it: Brian Banner’s ugly words cast new shape in his own voice box. 

This wasn’t heartbreak.

“I wasn’t thinking.”

 _How lucky for you._ Teenagers weren’t built for this kind of viciousness, Bruce thought, finger nails gouging bloodless lines on the insides of his wrists. His frame, short and weedy, shook with it like a rattling plastic bag, too brittle to hold the hatred hostage for long. It would rampage through his body, eventually tearing itself out – and what would he do then?

“He was…offering. And I didn’t know how to say no.”

The injustice of it rankled the most. Which was strange in its own right, because Bruce had never grown with the ideals of good and bad, the world as a perfectly fair, balanced scale and destined to stay that way, pre-established in his head. But it still, frustratingly, rankled; not six months had gone by since she’d pressed and he’d reluctantly agreed, not six months till he’d gone about losing his virginity as a stuttering coward would. And still, instead of asking: _why would you do that to me,_ he found himself with _why wouldn’t you just do this earlier._

“I.” Holly gnawed on her lip, hazel eyes running over him in a terrified flitter. “I feel terrible. And this is going to be a dick thing to say, but.” He’d liked her for that, when they’d first gotten together. For saying the dick things. His dad called him a pussy every morning, it seemed a match made in heaven. “I didn’t think this would…matter to you. That much.”

Bruce had never put much stock in heaven, himself. “Sorry to exceed expectations.”

Holly laughed, a little burble of distraught, amused sound. Such a dick. “You were always so nice. It never seemed to translate to _caring_ , though.”

Bruce didn’t contradict her. “I trusted you,” he said.

“Yeah.” Holly breathed, blocked nose clearly audible. She knuckled at the base of it, and Bruce wondered if it was supposed to make him feel nostalgic, or bitter. It accomplished neither. “I suppose you did.”

 

~

_She’s pretty._ It was as one might feel, distractedly coming to a stop at the sidewalk and admiring the house up by the turn of the road. Absent musings, worth much of nothing.

It was the most, and the least important thing about her. Bruce could only muster an abstract, almost contemptuous regard. _She’s pretty._

Natasha Romanoff blinked prettily at him, the barrel of her gun only slightly off the midline of his throat. She probably didn’t need point-blank range to get a shot in. Still, at this distance the arterial blood would catch her in the face, bright red to match the sweat-sodden hair tucked behind her ear. Frothy too, if she also managed to nick his respiratory tract. Sure, all that mess could be avoided if she adjusted her angle a bit, came in from the front…though that wasn’t guaranteed, especially if the bullet got deflected by his thyroid cartilage – maybe crushing in the trachea, maybe shredding the carotid sheath–

She raised a hand to her ear, nail scraping down the lobe, bumping the ear piece on the way. “Stand down. We’re good here.”

Kolkata shuffled around them, the rustle and clicks of a squad of men disarming drowned in the din. The gun lowered.

Ah, life. The constant balancing act between murder and suicide. Bruce smiled. “Just you and me, huh?”

 

~

 

“Banner!” Barton bellowed, even though he was barely twenty metres away and sprawled on the common room’s shag carpet like an overly spoilt pet. “Come, educate the ignorants on spin the bottle.”

“I claim privileges of token straight Avenger.” Bruce tried not to let his lips quirk, but it was inevitable with the camera-worthy splutter Cap had just executed over the lip of his beer bottle. With Tony and Barton on the team, he rarely ever elicited this kind of reaction – it was hard not to feel a touch of self-satisfaction. “Considering present company and the four in five chances of kissing a guy, I’d prefer not to join in, thank you.”

“Codswallop.” Came the dramatic declaration from the couch – Tony rolling over onto his belly to suit the motion. “You’re in a house with Barton’s arms,” An empty beer bottle used efficiently as laser pointer to emphasise the words, Barton flexing his biceps helpfully to assist, “ _my_ butt, and Capsicle’s abs. There’s no way you don’t have a queer boner in your body.”

“Pretty sure that’s not how the idiom goes.” Cap pointed out lightly, upper lip still shiny with spilled beer; but gave himself away a second later when his chin dipped, eyes glancing down at his own abdomen with a flush rising to his cheeks.

“Do I not have any desirable physical attributes, Stark?” Thor was squatting on the carpet too, but with a kind of leonine grace that made even the crosslegged pose look regal. His eyes glinted, like he wasn’t really expecting any kind of slight on his looks, but wouldn’t be affected if it came all the same.

“Well, hair.” Tony shrugged loosely, bottle rolling out of his grip to fall to the floor with a muted _thunk._ “But that isn’t gendered, so.”

“And abs are?” Bruce stiffened as a shadow fell over the counter he’d propped his back against; Natasha leaning in from the other side, newly poured scotch gleaming in a tumbler set by her elbow. Her chin rested casually on folded knuckles, her lashes gold-tipped in the lighting.

“Just saying that some confused youngin’ could delude himself into straightness over lush rivers of gold-spun locks.” Tony’s fingers reached out to tug at said locks as if to illustrate, immediately retracted at the sight of Thor’s toothy don’t-you-even-think-about-it grin. “Rogers’ rock-hard plateaus are a bit more in-your-face in that respect, y’know?”

Natasha wrapped two fingers around her glass, her silken sleeve whispering against the granite counter as she raised the drink to her lips. No reply seemed forthcoming; the comment had too obviously been made for Cap’s benefit anyway, who looked keen to migrate straight out through the doorway he’d been leaning against all night. Poor man, probably hadn’t anticipated the level of sexual harassment involved when assuming leadership of a superhero team.

 _Poor man, blessed with preternatural good looks and a serum-perfect body._ Bruce didn’t censor the faintly bitter thought. Sometimes you had to make compromises, to ensure ugliness of this kind wouldn’t spill over his lips into the real world.

Internally caught up as he was, he couldn’t stop the errant flinch when soft tones spoke not far from his ear. “Straight, you said?”

Bruce looked back. Natasha had the scotch glass comfortably cradled in her palm, not a hint of a smudge visible on the rim, the russet mouth hovering inches above it flawless. It was uncanny.

“It isn’t nice to whisper.” He said it before he’d fully thought the words out, but there was nothing for it. That was Natasha for you: always faintly jarring, setting off prickles along the skin no matter how much she tried to put you at ease. Or maybe it was just him. “While talking in a group, I mean.”

“Sorry, were you going to participate?” For the words being what they were, Natasha’s tone was spectacularly even-keeled. Like she was asking a genuine question.

“I _was_ participating.” The conversation had already picked up again behind them; Bruce’s jaw tightened by a fraction.

“How long have you had that line you just said to Clint stored up in your head?” If Bruce were the bristling kind of person, that sentence would have definitely set him off. She wasn’t even looking at him as she said it; eyelids fluttering as she took a casual sip of her drink before pale green eyes drifted up again to regard him calmly.

Because that was her chosen form of approach, with him. With Tony it was all coy smiles, sharp barbs and riddles galore, with Cap it was open eye contact and as much sincerity as was permissible. This…this quiet regard where she didn’t taunt, didn’t sound mocking, just watched as if waiting to see how long he’d keep playing the part – was reserved especially for Bruce.

He was coddled by the world that would still interact with him, with the exception of Natasha Romanov. And Tony freaking Stark, but at least Tony freaking Stark’s motives were transparent. Misguided, but transparent.

Tony wanted a science partner, and a friend. Natasha…most of the time, Bruce didn’t know what the heck Natasha was playing at.

But if he’d been that easy to rile, the world would’ve gone to hell in a handbasket a long time ago. “Fine, you got me.” Gentle, mild self-derision – he pulled it off well. “It would’ve taken me at least another five minutes to screw up the courage to say something else.”

“I don’t know if it’s to do with courage.” And that was startling in of itself, Natasha Romanov beginning a sentence with _I don’t know._ Another ploy of some sort, inevitably. She wasn’t looking away, irises steady. “I think you just don’t like talking to people that much.”

 _And you’re seeking me out for conversation – why?_ Bruce dipped his head to his collarbone, a gradual motion, not quite a nod, and said nothing.

Natasha wouldn’t relent. A sip of scotch, an ingenuous blink. “So, straight?”

Bruce held back a sigh. From the rabble, Thor and Barton appeared to be comparing bicep sizes, Tony gleefully presiding over the proceedings, with frequent asides to a distinctly amused looking Captain America. Yeah, no help from that quarter. “Functionally, sure.”

Bruce half-expected an arched eyebrow. It seemed like the sort of urbane, inscrutable expression ex-Russian spies would sport. Natasha greeted him with another blink. “Now that’s a qualifier I haven’t heard before.”

“I’m not too…interested in that side of things.”  Nice and non-committal. Nothing to do with how even the idea of having someone that close, breath hitting skin, was enough to send Bruce’s heartbeat skittering. “But if I…uh, hypothetically were, then it would…”

“Be in someone of the feminine persuasion.” Natasha completed, eyes straying back to the drink as if in concluded thought. Probably adding the fact to the file. Bruce would hesitate over giving her yet another tool to technically play him with, but she’d never needed tools to do damage.

“You’re bisexual.” It came out as a blurt, too late to pull back and hanging awkwardly; probably because Bruce wasn’t halfway as good at the ‘make incisive assumptions about people and quote it to them like life-truths’ thing that Natasha did so well. Not that Bruce wasn't fairly certain about this little bit of trivia, he had –

Natasha laughed. It lasted for a second, a rise and fall of low-pitched sound. And the murmur that followed in its wake was interminably amused. “No.”

(So that flushed ‘fairly certain’ right down the drain. Unless she was lying to him, because it was easier to discern why she would lie to him, than why she wouldn’t.)

It took a few seconds of perplexed staring for Bruce to realise the drink set down by _his_ elbow now was unattended, and that she was walking around the counter, inexorably approaching his side. “I said it wrong before.”

That particular combination of words from _her_ mouth did not help in the least, not with how spectacularly unmoored Bruce was feeling. This conversation was evolving too fast for him to keep up with. Natasha came to a standstill, a few scant inches away, lips still upturned. “As nice a line as ‘functionally straight’ makes at parties, Dr Banner – have you considered that maybe you just don’t like people in general?”

“…right.” Bruce pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose, fingers suddenly itching. It did nothing to obscure the sight of unswerving green eyes.

Natasha’s lips pressed in on themselves, gaze growing bright. And before Bruce knew it – there was a hand darting up to weave through the curls at his hairline, mussing it slightly before patting it down, there and away in an instant.

 _Did. Did she just…ruffle my hair?_  

Unmoored wasn’t quite the word to describe it, anymore. Flabbergasted, maybe. And he wasn’t the only one – before she wiped it completely, Bruce caught a distinctly discomfited expression on Natasha’s face, almost wide-eyed; like stage seven of some elaborately hatched plan had gone Very Wrong, and regrouping was required, stat.

“Um.” Natasha stared at the slightly depressed portion of Bruce’s hair for a couple more seconds, before her eyes jumped to the far end of the room, face perfectly composed. “Have a pleasant evening, Bruce.”

And off she went, crossing the room in a deceptively small number of steps and politely excusing herself through the same doorway Bruce was sure Captain America was going to use as an escape hatch not so long ago. Also – the ‘Doctor Banner’ thing had apparently been deliberate.

 _Not important right now_ , Bruce told himself firmly – though it was yet another blip in a conversation that had been a raging spike from baseline. They were on first name terms, the way people who were adults and co-workers and weren’t the rest of the Avengers were on first name terms; unfailingly cordial and non-passive-aggressive. There was an undercurrent though, to their talks. Some form of…if not hostility, then at least unease. Had been from the very beginning.

And yet now there were repressed smiles and amused eyes and _hair ruffles_ – a softly enunciated ‘Dr Banner’ that was nothing like the way Bruce addressed Barton by his last name, that was almost…playful? He wasn’t used to this; the Natasha he knew had every move planned ages in advance, paid attention but always from behind shielded eyes. And that was how _Bruce_ approached their talks, always guarded and wary, but this…

This. Bruce stared bemusedly at the half-empty tumbler of scotch on the counter, lone and deserted. This was altogether inexplicable.

 

~

 

 

It was probably more traditional to let the water keep beating down on his neck.

Instead, Bruce turned the shower off, knob squealing under slippery fingers. The cold prickled on his skin, droplets trickling uncomfortably down the line of his back. He stood till his frame trembled with shivers, air drafts chilling on wet skin.

Had they figured it out yet? Probably; he’d given them the clues himself, felt the words ricochet emptily in the dry expanse of his mouth. Staring at a corpse, made of shattered gold light.

_“Ultron could've assimilated Jarvis. This isn't strategy, this is...rage.”_

The back of his head thudded against tile; he felt nothing. The team only saw Ultron’s swift talking, the casual assumption of knowing what was best for the entire world. And Tony made it so easy too…with his derisive laughter, distracting aggression. All attention focused solely on him. Maybe it was deliberate, maybe an unconscious reflex – Tony could be a self-sacrificing fool like that sometimes.

But a propensity for banter and warped futurism weren’t the dangerous things that Ultron inherited. They didn’t drive him towards wiping out the planet of humanity. Rage did.

And Bruce knew where he got that from.

By the time he stepped out of the cubicle, his teeth were chattering. The towel was too soft against his skin; he dried himself with rough, cursory strokes. The only clothes he had were tossed carelessly on the floor of the room he’d been assigned, and they’d have to do; borrowing from Barton while they were already intruding on his privacy like this felt out of question. He secured the towel about his waist mindlessly, and stepped out bare foot on the room’s linoleum floor.

“I would’ve joined you, but it didn’t seem like the right time.”

A prolonged exhale. He pulled his eyes up reluctantly from the floor’s checkered patterns, up to the figure leaning by the door. The outline was a little blurred sans glasses, but unmistakable.

Natasha slipped in. Drew close, step by increasing step. Paused just at the outside edge of personal bubbles, then stepped right through.

The tilt of that uplifted chin was…enchanting, Bruce could admit. Their very breaths seemed aligned, push and pull, ebbing and flowing in eddies. But it came accompanied by a butterfly touch: a light-fingered hand skating up the line of his collarbone, and Bruce’s mind whited out.

_No._

The angle of her chin grew more prominent, her entire face tilting to the side. As gently as it had come, that light touch whispered away. Natasha watched him, soft-eyed. “Not even for comfort?”

“It.” The word struggled in his throat, rough and ungainly – and for all that Bruce made a practice of loathing himself, it rarely overcame him so completely. “It wouldn’t be…comfortable. For me.”

A few seconds more of silent watching. “Good.” Natasha said, and withdrew; nimble feet padding over to the bed, the frame creaking as her weight settled on the mattress. She crossed an ankle over the other, green irises clear. “I’m asexual.”

Bruce blinked rapidly. Conversations lapsed ages ago shot across his brain in a blur: that quiet laugh, the firm denial when he’d literally accused her of bisexuality.  His mouth worked uselessly for moments, before words started spilling out, ill-hewn and incoherent. “But you just…why would you…”

Even her shrug was elegant, a little loop that her shoulders described in the air. “It doesn’t bother me. I’m not sex-repulsed; just indifferent to it.” Her lips curved, ever so slightly. “And with how tied up physical intimacy is with…other kinds of attraction, I guess it just seemed easier.”

 _Other kinds of attraction._ And quick on the heels of it, the old memory still playing: _“have you considered that maybe you just don’t like people in general?”_

His expression was a little too brittle. “Lucky for you I’m a bit too much of a coward for sex, then.”

He was anticipating any number of answers. Maybe a delicately drawled, _lucky? does that mean this is a yes?_ To which he’d have replied, _a thousand times._

But Natasha’s lips only flattened, gaze implacable. “Have you thought not wanting to do something might not be the same as being a coward?”

 _I wasn’t talking about you. Just me._ Bruce smiled, resigned and dark. “Never been able to tell the difference before.”

 

~

 

“What’s your favourite book?”

Bruce supposed the expression on his face was more than a little sceptical, because Natasha kept watching him, patient and unblinking. There was never any sulking, or pouting, or plaintive ‘ _come ooooon’_ s with Natasha. Just out-waiting the silence.

He cracked. “I’ve never decided on just one.”

The swing frame creaked, clods of dirt disturbed as heels skimmed against the earth. Quite impressive really, that she managed to maintain eye contact despite all that. Bruce sighed.

Four weeks after Tony had driven off into the distance ‘forever’, he came roaring back into the Facility: new car, new glares and loudly demanding new upgrade requests. After a few seconds of silence, during which the New Avengers all looked at each other awkwardly – Natasha asked for a swingset.

( _“Didn’t know you guys were already there, but anywho – I’m a bit of a virgin with sex toy design.”_

_“Outside.”_

_“Kinky.”_

_._

_“…ohh.”)_

Tony continued to assume it was all still a joke, Natasha remaining unruffled as only one who’d made a career out of profiting from people’s assumptions of her motives could. (Bruce didn’t try to much, anymore. She spoke, and he listened: an honest exchange. A bit of a revelatory experience for the both of them.)

But anyway – schematics for a swingset arrived at the Facility within a week, extravagant enough for a Disneyland ride. Natasha scratched the entire thing out and sent back a poorly rendered doodle of something more suited to a children’s park. Now fully committed to the ‘joke’, Tony sent handymen to the facility with the crayon drawing in hand. Natasha directed them to the meadow behind the east wing.

And now they were here: Bruce motionless, tailbone pressed against the wood of the swingseat, even as the chains for the adjacent seat rattled next to him. Natasha’s back curved into the motion as she propelled herself further, the swing describing an arc that stretched farther and higher with every gentle _whoosh_.

The sun was glinting in his eyes; Bruce plucked off his glasses and reflexively began wiping them on his sleeve, finally slipping the frames into his shirt pocket. The world and his vision was still overcome with gold spots; Natasha must be positively blinded at that height. He wondered how she bore it. If he helped.

“What’s yours?”

The swing continued to creak – Bruce kept watching. The lobes of her ears peeked behind a mass of riotous, poppy-red waves; she probably hadn’t combed her hair since morning. There was a spring leaf caught just above her hairline.

“The Kite Runner.” Her voice was borne on the breeze, quiet and fleeting. “Afghani writer, Khaled Hosseini.”

There was a beech tree twenty metres to the left of them, thick trunk and towering foliage; the sunlight strained through its leaves, casting dappled shadows on Natasha’s face. Light and dark and clear and bright. Bruce breathed. “I thought it might be something you might’ve read when you were…growing up. Can’t imagine Russian fairytales to be the cheeriest, admittedly.”

“Fairytales aren’t supposed to be cheery. They’re supposed to introduce you to life-truths, in a format you can handle as a child.” Any other person might have called her tone detached. To Bruce, Natasha sounded contemplative. Like her emotions worked best when they were separated from her. “Parents die, you have to leave your home, there is always someone in the world that means you harm.”

 _Here there be dragons._ Her feet made perfect ballet points as she swung back, the leaf escaping her curls and drifting down to settle on the grass-covered ground. “Of course, they also sell you ideas that make it easier…possible, to live in the same world as those truths.”

“True love.” Bruce’s lips were moving, he didn’t make an effort to still them. “Soulmates.”

“Yes.” _Whoosh._ Those eyes strayed skywards, where cloud-wisps were being buffeted about by the wind, ephemeral white on blue. Natasha’s lips curved. “And freedom.”

Quiet. Bruce waited her out, unspeaking.

“The Kite Runner sold me on the idea of redemption. No matter how far man falls, how despicably he stains his hands. There’s always the hope of washing it all away.” The arc was shortening, the swing beginning to creak to a stop. Natasha’s heels skimmed the ground. “I suppose it was my fairytale.”

The swing trundled, slowly, before coming to stillness. Bruce turned his head to face her, palely green eyes meeting his own, calm and peaceful.

“I didn’t like those stories much. The notion of true love.” When Bruce breathed deep, he could smell the grass under his feet. His heart lumbered under his rib cage, slow and steady. “Maybe because I …don’t like people in general.”

It was barely visible, which was how he knew it was genuine – the curve of Natasha’s smile.

“I thought it made me selfish. Coldblooded.” His mouth felt strange, trying to shape itself into an expression that didn’t contain derision. “The antipathy towards sex didn’t help either.”

“I.” And it caught in his throat again, but Bruce breathed. Again and again, and Natasha waited for him through all of it. The words were ineloquent, but they were finally there. “I don’t know why you’re still here.” _With me._ “Maybe you’ve been a spy too long. Maybe the other person has always been more invested in the relationship than you have.”

“Maybe I don’t feel sexual or…. romantic, attraction.” _Maybe I’m not a selfish coward._ Bruce’s throat was dry, but his words were clear. “Maybe you think that means you can’t hurt me.”

There’s a holly tree he could glimpse, beyond Natasha’s head of hair, far off into the grounds. “You’d be wrong.”

_I care. I always have._

Natasha met his eyes, like she could hear the words. Like she had instilled them inside his head, with incisive comments that were never taunts, with calmly knowing gazes, with a patience that spoke volumes to the…adoration, she felt. Her own eyes looked content. “I know.”

  

_~fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if this appealed and anyone wants more ace-spectrum Marvel stuff :)


End file.
